Adair Turner

Chairman, Governing Board

Former Chairman, United Kingdom Financial Services Authority

Lord Turner is Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Prior to joining the Institute in 2013, he chaired the UK Financial Services Authority (2008-2013) and played a leading role in the redesign of the global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the International Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee.

Lord Turner has combined a business career with public policy and academia. He was at McKinsey from 1982-95, building their practice in East Europe and Russia; was Director General of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) 1995-2000; became Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-06) and has been a Non-Executive Director of a number of companies, including Standard Chartered plc (2006-08). Currently Lord Turner is an advisor to the Board of UK start-up bank OakNorth, a non-Executive Director at Prudential plc., and most recently appointed Chairman of CHUBB Europe. He is also chairing the Energy Transitions Commission, and is a Trustee of the British Museum. A cross-bench member of the House of Lords since 2005, he served as the first Chairman of the Climate Change Committee (2008-12); chaired the Pensions Commission (2003-06) and the Low Pay Commission (2002-06).

His latest book Between Debt and the Devil, was published by Princeton in 2015 and has been translated into Chinese; other publications include ‘Just Capital-The Liberal Economy’ (2001); ‘Economics After the Crisis’ (2012). He is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Financial Studies (Frankfurt), and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at Cass Business School. More recently he’s been appointed Visiting Fellow at the People’s Bank of China School of Finance, Tsinghua University (Beijing) and Visiting Professor at the International Center for Islamic Finance (INCEIF) in Kuala Lumpur. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.

Estimated space requirements for solar energy sufficient to power the entire world are reassuringly trivial, at 0.5-1% of global land area. For individual countries however, the challenges vary greatly, reflecting dramatic differences in population density.

The debate about so-called helicopter money is burdened by deep fears and unnecessary confusions: some worry that monetary finance is bound to produce hyperinflation; others argue that, in terms of increasing demand and inflation, it would be no more effective than current policies. Both cannot be right.